I second BackBlaze. I have my stuff backed up to a local disk, an external usb drive, and finally, BackBlaze. The local disk is in case of a primary drive failure. The external is in case of fire or something and I want to smash and grab important things. BackBlaze is in case all else fails.
The big issue here is that Amazon had previously sent transaction details (such as book titles, etc.) but without the user info. The state has these records on file - this judgement basically says that while the state has the transaction details, they cannot have the user information. If the state were to dump those details, Amazon might still be obligated to provide such information such as Joe Blow - $100 - Books.
This means for people like me, I still may be obligated to pay those back taxes (well, of course I paid them all already...)
I have worked fairly extensively with Sharepoint and used it as a platform for developing several different kinds of applications. That being said...
You hit the mark on most of your points * Yes, the database is impenetrable (and it supposed to be - you aren't supposed to muck with it) - keep in mind this isn't an open source product
* Lots of the features are too dumb for programmers/power users but easy for regular users to muck up - this is a governance issue and all "portals" can suffer from this
* Canned web parts are moderately powerful but do have limits. Same thing applies to other portal products, such as Websphere Portal, Tibco, etc. As a developer, you can always extend these parts just as you would in any other platform...but of course, it isn't something Sally from accounting can do.
* Mysterious errors usually come back to poor administration or poor governance - you would have the same thing if you didn't know how to properly administer Apache, Tomcat, or any other number of complex applications or platforms.
* Yep, vendor lockin sucks and it sucks about MS. But if you are an MS shop, it works pretty damn well. If you aren't, you probably weren't considering Sharepoint anyway, were you?
So basically, yes, if you don't take the time to learn and adequately use, administer, and deploy, it isn't going to be easy to work with. Don't get me wrong, it has its problems and I'm not saying it is easy but I can't say it is any more difficult than any other application in its class.
Yes, we chose to do the same thing. There are several advantages to this, namely:
1) It is free vs. very expensive
2) The blood is banked for anyone to use - this means that YOU can use it too if you need it - assuming nobody else has used it already. In general, the likelihood of someone else using your cord blood is pretty slim.
3) There are a great many genetic diseases for which your cord blood will be of no use - because these cells contain the same defect your child already has.
4) You get the benefit of knowing you could be saving a child who otherwise may not be saved.
Of course, another big drawback is that (at least in my area), the cord blood needs to be harvested immediately. If your child is born in the middle of the night, the collection folks obviously aren't working (public/non-profit funding I suppose)...so then your cord blood is gone. Luckily for me, mine was born 11am on a Thursday, so that wasn't a problem.
Maybe that works for you but you have to acknowledge that sometimes you do need to put in a bit more effort than that. Some sort of optimization is required for commonly searched terms. For many of us techies, this is part of building a site - quality content that is properly labeled. However, you'd be surprised how often something as simple as using the appropriate keywords on a site is overlooked. Common sense for us == optimization for the masses.
I can see your point. I used to be that SEO guy myself - and there was a lot of sleaze. I like to think I was one of the "good guys" though.
Here's the rub: most people (even educated ones) don't know those basic "rules" you are talking about. Good content? Foster an active community? Invest in your site? Amazingly, these are the things I advocated and the things people didn't know. I've had quite a bit of success with that method.
Oh, and making sure your keywords are on the page does wonders too...you'd be surprised how often people forget to use the terms people search for.
Being the big gorilla when it comes to a repository of videos fits with their strategy of doing search well - having all media (and related searches) at their fingertips will really help them propel that aspect of their business forward. I totally agree with Sergey. While I can see why they might want to release spreadsheets and word processing to compete with MS / Office, having all those products doesn't help them do what they do best. I think they should stick with their core strength - improving the way people find stuff. Diversifying too much will just leave them open to be dropped like so many SEs of the past (Altavista, etc.)
Exactly - I would love to see what they crawled and what general category those sites fit into.
Did they just release the crawler to go nuts, crawling everything and anything? Did they start it at a safe point (like say, yahoo.com) or someplace else? Did it crawl the seedy underbelly of the web (pr0n, warez, etc)?
Ultimately, with enough data you could assign a level of probable safety to a category of sites - browse that free pr0n site and you have a 3.4% chance of infection. Common sense for us but might be a decent educational tool for Joe Sixpack.
I think not. Most people (at least Americans) don't care what Google does in China, even if they know anything at all about it. All they care about is the search results and products Google makes FOR THEM.
Not to mention habits are hard to break, so "Googling it" is something that now comes as second nature to many people and isn't likely to change over China.
Slashdot Mirror
I second BackBlaze. I have my stuff backed up to a local disk, an external usb drive, and finally, BackBlaze. The local disk is in case of a primary drive failure. The external is in case of fire or something and I want to smash and grab important things. BackBlaze is in case all else fails.
The big issue here is that Amazon had previously sent transaction details (such as book titles, etc.) but without the user info. The state has these records on file - this judgement basically says that while the state has the transaction details, they cannot have the user information. If the state were to dump those details, Amazon might still be obligated to provide such information such as Joe Blow - $100 - Books.
This means for people like me, I still may be obligated to pay those back taxes (well, of course I paid them all already...)
Speak for yourself there buddy, I love lady Gaga to death!
Sounds to me like a case of.... bad romance...
<Insert groans here>
*puts on sunglasses*
YYYEEEAAAHHHH!!!
Picasa is best, however, AFAIK it doesn't store the info in the files...stores the face stuff in its own database. I learned this the hard way...
I have worked fairly extensively with Sharepoint and used it as a platform for developing several different kinds of applications. That being said...
You hit the mark on most of your points
* Yes, the database is impenetrable (and it supposed to be - you aren't supposed to muck with it) - keep in mind this isn't an open source product
* Lots of the features are too dumb for programmers/power users but easy for regular users to muck up - this is a governance issue and all "portals" can suffer from this
* Canned web parts are moderately powerful but do have limits. Same thing applies to other portal products, such as Websphere Portal, Tibco, etc. As a developer, you can always extend these parts just as you would in any other platform...but of course, it isn't something Sally from accounting can do.
* Mysterious errors usually come back to poor administration or poor governance - you would have the same thing if you didn't know how to properly administer Apache, Tomcat, or any other number of complex applications or platforms.
* Yep, vendor lockin sucks and it sucks about MS. But if you are an MS shop, it works pretty damn well. If you aren't, you probably weren't considering Sharepoint anyway, were you?
So basically, yes, if you don't take the time to learn and adequately use, administer, and deploy, it isn't going to be easy to work with. Don't get me wrong, it has its problems and I'm not saying it is easy but I can't say it is any more difficult than any other application in its class.
Yes, we chose to do the same thing. There are several advantages to this, namely:
1) It is free vs. very expensive
2) The blood is banked for anyone to use - this means that YOU can use it too if you need it - assuming nobody else has used it already. In general, the likelihood of someone else using your cord blood is pretty slim.
3) There are a great many genetic diseases for which your cord blood will be of no use - because these cells contain the same defect your child already has.
4) You get the benefit of knowing you could be saving a child who otherwise may not be saved.
Of course, another big drawback is that (at least in my area), the cord blood needs to be harvested immediately. If your child is born in the middle of the night, the collection folks obviously aren't working (public/non-profit funding I suppose)...so then your cord blood is gone. Luckily for me, mine was born 11am on a Thursday, so that wasn't a problem.
Maybe that works for you but you have to acknowledge that sometimes you do need to put in a bit more effort than that. Some sort of optimization is required for commonly searched terms. For many of us techies, this is part of building a site - quality content that is properly labeled. However, you'd be surprised how often something as simple as using the appropriate keywords on a site is overlooked. Common sense for us == optimization for the masses.
I can see your point. I used to be that SEO guy myself - and there was a lot of sleaze. I like to think I was one of the "good guys" though.
Here's the rub: most people (even educated ones) don't know those basic "rules" you are talking about. Good content? Foster an active community? Invest in your site? Amazingly, these are the things I advocated and the things people didn't know. I've had quite a bit of success with that method.
Oh, and making sure your keywords are on the page does wonders too...you'd be surprised how often people forget to use the terms people search for.
Being the big gorilla when it comes to a repository of videos fits with their strategy of doing search well - having all media (and related searches) at their fingertips will really help them propel that aspect of their business forward. I totally agree with Sergey. While I can see why they might want to release spreadsheets and word processing to compete with MS / Office, having all those products doesn't help them do what they do best. I think they should stick with their core strength - improving the way people find stuff. Diversifying too much will just leave them open to be dropped like so many SEs of the past (Altavista, etc.)
Exactly - I would love to see what they crawled and what general category those sites fit into.
Did they just release the crawler to go nuts, crawling everything and anything? Did they start it at a safe point (like say, yahoo.com) or someplace else? Did it crawl the seedy underbelly of the web (pr0n, warez, etc)?
Ultimately, with enough data you could assign a level of probable safety to a category of sites - browse that free pr0n site and you have a 3.4% chance of infection. Common sense for us but might be a decent educational tool for Joe Sixpack.
I think not. Most people (at least Americans) don't care what Google does in China, even if they know anything at all about it. All they care about is the search results and products Google makes FOR THEM.
Not to mention habits are hard to break, so "Googling it" is something that now comes as second nature to many people and isn't likely to change over China.